Scott Gagnon announced a new coalition called Mainers Protecting Our Youth and Communities to oppose marijuana legalization.
Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

A leading opponent of marijuana legalization in Maine said Tuesday he has formed a new coalition to try to defeat the initiative in November, although he would not identify any of the group’s members and said its leadership is still taking shape.

Mainers Protecting Our Youth and Communities includes parents, youth, health experts, faith leaders, law enforcement and public health advocates, according to Scott Gagnon, spokesman for the group. Gagnon also is chairman of Smart Approaches to Marijuana Maine, which has opposed legalization at the local and state levels.

Gagnon said he was not naming any of the other individuals or groups involved in the coalition because a steering committee is still being formed. He said more details about the coalition will be released in the near future.

Gagnon said the group is working to identify and recruit volunteers to serve as county captains as it focuses and localizes its efforts to fight the legalization initiative. He said coalition members have a number of concerns about the initiative, including the impact on youth, employers and communities.

“This initiative to legalize marijuana poses significant threats to our youth and communities,” Gagnon said in a prepared statement. “The marijuana industry has crafted an initiative that would see shops opened in neighborhoods all over Maine, selling potent pot gummy bears and cookies, and other highly addictive and dangerous products. These products have (led) to increases in ER admissions in Colorado, including admissions of preschool-aged children.”

The legalization campaign also is likely to face opposition from some medical marijuana growers and patients who fear the referendum will put marijuana in the hands of big business and destroy the local industry that has sprung up around medicinal uses of cannabis. A small contingent of growers and patients protested in Augusta when legalization supporters turned ballot petitions in to the Secretary of State’s Office on Feb. 1.

The path to the ballot was a bit bumpy for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which collected roughly 100,000 petition signatures in its effort to qualify for the November ballot. Secretary of State Matt Dunlap invalidated nearly half of those signatures for various reasons, including inconsistencies between the notary signatures on file with the state and those on petition sheets. A state court later ordered Dunlap’s office to review the signatures again.

The legalization proposal headed for the November ballot would allow adults to possess up to 2½ ounces of marijuana and to cultivate a limited number of plants. Retail stores and social clubs would be allowed with state and municipal approval. Adults would be prohibited from using marijuana in public, with violations punishable by a $100 fine. The bill also would place a sales tax of 10 percent on retail marijuana and marijuana products.

David Boyer, campaign manager for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, said he is not surprised that Gagnon put together a group to oppose the initiative.

“It’s unfortunate that they’re already bringing out scare tactics and wild exaggerations,” Boyer said. “It’s unfortunate that when (Gagnon) talks about having a science-based discussion, they’re using Reefer Madness 2.0 to stretch the truth.”

In his announcement about the coalition, Gagnon said members are concerned about youth access to marijuana edibles, which Gagnon says could be marketed to children. Boyer said the initiative contains specific language that prevents marijuana from being advertised to children and requires that edibles be sold in child-proof packaging.

If Maine were to legalize recreational marijuana, it would join Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., in allowing adults to buy and possess the drug. All have passed laws legalizing recreational marijuana despite a federal prohibition.

California, Nevada, Arizona and Massachusetts are among the states that will consider marijuana legalization in 2016.

In 2014, supporters of legal marijuana in Maine pushed to get the issue on municipal ballots. South Portland voters joined Portland in approving an ordinance to support legalization, while residents in Lewiston soundly rejected the idea. Portland voters had approved a similar ordinance in 2013.

Those votes to allow adults to possess marijuana were seen largely as symbolic because marijuana remains illegal under state and federal law.

Gagnon said Mainers Protecting Our Youth and Communities plans to launch a website and social media sites soon. He said the coalition also will start fundraising, but expects that it will not be able to raise as much money as the pro-legalization campaign.

“We know there are a lot of concerned Mainers out there who may be able to contribute a little bit,” he said. “There will be a lot of fundraising in our future.”

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Gagnon has made a career out of sowing fear by lying about cannabis. This is yet another example of his dishonesty on this topic. We now have enough evidence to know for a fact that legalization and regulation of cannabis protects kids far better than prohibition and the black market. We also know for a fact that cannabis is not highly addictive; in fact its addictive properties are so mild that most people don’t consider it addictive at all. We also know for a fact that the current policies of prohibition have wreaked havoc not only upon our youth (whose access to cannabis under prohibition is basically unrestrained) but also upon our communities (especially our economically disadvantaged urban neighborhoods), upon our neighbors to the south who have in some cases suffered a complete breakdown of law and order due to our unrealistic failed policies, upon our prison systems, and especially upon our police who under prohibition have been rendered corrupt and oppressive.

Franklin

Prisons for profit. No one is believing anyting else in the 21st Century. Our government spent a trillion dollars on the drug war. It was not effective. We had no impact on supply or demand,

The reality is that we have only two choices. To keep things the way they are now with the black markets. Or to regulate marijuana like adults.

America has more people in prison right now than Communist China and Russia combined. Half of those people were initially arrested on a prohibition offense.

The prison for profit industry is well financed and as vicious as any fascist movement in the 20th century. They tell a lie, then make it bigger. Selling fear to funded by the empty federal treasury. Parasites don’t care about their hosts. Billions of dollar a year at stake in private prison and court ordered quack rehabs to mooch off the taxpayer.

Marijuana is certainly safer than alcohol so we refuse to have that discussion with the uneducated minority. I live in Silicon Valley in one of the most expensive zip codes in the world. Microsoft, Apple, Google, and every other technology company chooses to locate here for a reason. We have had legal marijuana for 20 years now and in that time the Iphone became the global standard. We have not experienced a single problem that Prohibition groups talk about.

We have the highest taxes in America so all these IT companies aren’t coming here to save money. The cost of living and doing business in California is as high as any place in the world. We draw the smartest people on the planet because we have laws that don’t allow for discrimination which is also favoritism. If you can figure out how to make something work better, we don’t care about your race or gender, or what school you went to. We care about real productivity because that is what the global economy buys.

America can not survive an economy funded by big debt. If the parasite social worker who is leading this effort has any value, then we could trade our addictions services for some of the 20 trillion dollars in debt we owe right now. Prohibition people are responsible directly for a trillion dollars of that debt. This loser is trying to scare people into ruining America.

You can see what regulated marijuana looks like. Come to Stanford University and drive around our neighborhood. Visit Berkeley on the other side of the bay. Visit Denver, Seattle, or Portland, Oregon where American business is building again. It’s not just about marijuana. It’s about Americans standing up to these bullies and saying we are not fearful people. We are Americans. You can go be as fearful on your own property as you want to as long as you aren’t hurting anyone else. But don’t come to us for tax money to fund another reefer madness or any other irrational fear you have.

In the next 20 years we are gong to see a divide in America between states who will prosper in the future and states who will look like 3rd World countries, surviving on crumbs for a federal budget that is eventually going to it a brick wall. Prohibition is social engineering.

unapologetic_american

How many Coloradoans have died from pot overdoses?

That’s what I thought.

AFreedomFighter88

Exactly! And all the while 45 people a day die from overdose on pharmaceutical drugs period every 9 Minutes a child is admitted to the emergency room in the United States for pharmaceutical drug poisoning.

red

they have been spilling this trash so long they believe it themselves.
I know they are not too stupid to read and reach their own conclusions.
It’s all really about our corrupt government

Cassius King

S.A.M. makes up their own “facts” to suit their fascist agenda. Ask yourself, how does an unregulated black market keep children safer than a regulated commercial market? As for medical growers who fear big business; grow better product. If you have top self cannibis, you’ll be able to name your own price. If you grow the same commercial marijuana strains as everyone else, you should get run over by people who are supplying the market with a premium product. Neither SAM or bitter Medical growers will be able to stop the march towards legal recreational cannibis.

AFreedomFighter88

All the current research shows that consumption among teens goes down in states that have fully legalized cannabis. The save the children argument was always complete nonsense but it’s proven by statistical date of these days. Folks really interested in Saving children with first keep them away from Alcohol, Tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs which are directly responsible for over six hundred and fifty thousand deaths per year here in the United States alone.

AFreedomFighter88

Addiction to legal pharmaceutical opioids (like Percocet, Fentanyl, Oxycodone, Percodan) is proven to be a direct GATEWAY to heroin use. Prescription drugs are directly responsible for over 237,000 deaths yearly in the US plus over 5,000 killed due to pharmaceutical intoxicated drivers. 46 PEOPLE DIE PER DAY from overdose of opium-based pharmaceuticals in the US. Every 9 minutes a child is admitted to a hospital emergency room for pharmaceutical drug poisoning.

Booze consumption is a direct GATEWAY to alcoholism, street violence, domestic violence, traffic fatalities, teen pregnancies and death. Over 88,000 people die every year in our nation due to alcohol consumption plus 16,000 more in traffic fatalities directly caused by booze intoxicated drivers. Alcohol, more than any illegal drug, was found to be closely associated with violent crimes, including murder, rape, assault, child and spousal abuse. About 3 million violent crimes occur each year in which victims perceive the offender to have been drinking and statistics related to alcohol use by violent offenders generally show that about half of all homicides and assaults are committed when the offender, victim, or both have been drinking. Among violent crimes, with the exception of robberies, the offender is far more likely to have been drinking than under the influence of other drugs.

Cannabis has never been proven by scientific study as a gateway drug and has never killed one single person in all medical history due to toxic overdose. No matter how much cannabis ones consumes even an entire bag of edibles it is never fatal. Cannabis has no significant statistical history of traffic problems let alone deaths. By comparison to booze and pills cannabis is very safe and far less toxic. Data posted above taken directly from the Center for Disease Control database.

So, which is safer???? Legalize, regulate and TAX!

kenindy

This gentleman serves many groups. Who pays his salary?

PhilDeBowl

Actually it might be you, through your tax dollars the Feds grant Millions each year to Ant-marijuana organizations, I would not be surprised if the people at SAM haven’t already dipped into that bucket. Look up SAMSHA grants.

David M. Perry

Enough already. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never killed anyone. It’s not a “gateway” to hard drugs. It doesn’t make anyone violent and nobody has ever overdosed on it. I am tired of do-gooders like these shaking their fingers in our faces and denouncing everything they disapprove of or fear. All they are accomplishing is making people tell lies to their doctors to get “medical marijuana,” or causing them to contribute to an untaxed underground economy. Legalization provides tax revenue and puts a lot of small-time dealers out of business. Grow up, Gagnon and un-named co-conspirators.

wm97

Scott Gagnon has had plenty of chances to come out for a debate on this topic. He never does so. A quick search of his articles on the web will show why — he gets taken apart at the seams whenever he does make an argument.

maineman11111

my employer is already ‘weeding’ out the potheads

PhilDeBowl

Tell us the name of your employer so we can Boycott the business.

Nog

Marijuana is as dangerous as water. Water kills kids all the time. They choke, gag and die. Wait a minute, marijuana never killed anybody; water-legal, marijuana-illegal?
Time to correct these idiotic laws.

CleanUpME

Those who support marijuana legalization should restrain the hotheads in their midst who argue for allowing an “Anything goes” mentality in the U.S.. As evidenced in some posts here.
There are pros and cons of legalizing pot and many people are willing to listen to both arguments. But we will not tolerate legalization of harmful drugs such as crack, meth, heroin, and others. We will not tolerate a society without rules and laws.
Any law that legalizes the sale of pot must include protections to keep it from the young. It should be regulated and taxed like alcohol is. Allowing it to be cultivated outside of legal sales must be curbed.
Reading the arguments of some in favor of this one gets the feeling there are other motivations than the legalization of marijuana.

PhilDeBowl

I agree with most of what you say with the exception of growing your own. Adults should be free to grow what they want as long as it is not being sold, just as I can brew my own beer.

Brian Kelly

Let’s not intentionally try to alarm and worry the public about legalizing “all drugs” right now.

That concept is often used as a scare-tactic by prohibitionists in an attempt to frighten the public away from marijuana legalization by clumping marijuana legalization in with the legalization of other drugs which are far more scary and dangerous than relatively benign,often healing marijuana.

Marijuana is just about the safest drug out there. Legal or not, and much less dangerous than perfectly legal, widely accepted, endlessly advertised, often glorified alcohol consumption.

Which makes marijuana legalization unique, and certainly a much different, and far more urgent matter than the legalization of “all drugs” right now.

Let’s not lose focus of the real issue at hand here. Marijuana, the only currently illegal recreational drug that is much safer than perfectly legal alcohol.

Legalize Marijuana Nationwide!

PhilDeBowl

What a load of Horsesiht. But then you Prohibes are the experts at slinging BS.

State of Psychosis

a friend of mine committed suicide in prison while the guards watched and were ordered not to stop it over this damn drug war. tell me again about how legalization hurts young people and how it’s not these cruel and disgusting prohibition laws that do it? seriously, you’re a monster if you still support prohibition in 2016. We know that prohibition does far more harm than legalization cannabis could ever do. that’s a scientific fact now. get out of the dark ages already.

davetimesone

Pamela,

It’s very likely that will reach an age at which you begin to develop conditions which can be helped with pharmaceuticals.

It’s just as likely that you will eventually suffer negative side effects because of a pill you feel you need to take.

There’s only a 1-in-26 chance that you will develop epilepsy but there is a good chance you will develop SOME condition that can be treated with medical marijuana.

At first I wanted to ask you to vow to never use marijuana to treat any such condition in your life but that wouldn’t be fair — you aren’t currently suffering from drug side effects from drugs which are so bad that sometimes the condition you started with looks better. You simply don’t understand. You can’t relate. So that my first thought wouldn’t be fair.

I believe that one day you will be able to relate, however. I’m sure there will be some medical marijuana users who look at you with disdain and treat you badly but I think you will find that most welcome you — because they know what it’s like to suffer so badly.

Golbart Hasel

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